Day 9 - Mountains, Rain, the DMV and my first Geocache.

Miles Driven - 176
Total Miles - 829
Ochoco Pass to Silver Falls Sate Park, Oregon

The DMV.  I wish this word didn't send shivers down my spine. Would prefer sending good energy up my spine. That said we have had an interesting saga in our move up to Oregon.

We just discovered two weeks ago that the registration for our Subaru which was left in Oregon, still does not have the license plates.  We had submitted the registration paperwork over 3 months ago, when Sraddha visited Laurelwood.  Come to find out the bank info was left off the form and another co-owner, not named Sraddha or Kent is on the registration.

What the heck is happening here? They also misplaced the file and another name is on the registration in process.  A phone call to DMV and now a visit to Prineville DMV has moved along the process. We now have temporary (60 day) permit to drive the Subaru when we return next week, however not the registration which could take another 4-6 weeks.  Not good since we want to sell the Subaru.  Arghh.

This also makes us gun-shy to transfer the RV registration now which we need to initiate upon return next week.

Rainforest outside our back door here in Silver Falls State Park

Anyway we continued west from Prineville over the Cascades through a driving rainstorm.  The mountains were socked in so no good photos.

North falls from overlook

Overnight we move from camping in deserts for past 8 months to camping in a rain forest. What a difference a day makes!

Trees to the left of North Falls overlook.

We settled into Silver Falls State Park east of Salem, unhooking in pouring rain. Can you say "wet in 30 seconds"?  Later in day we drove to Silverton to see the Gordon House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built after his death.  It was recently moved, yes torn down and moved to its present location.

Gordon House in Silverton, OR

Kent finding his first geocache

Amazing design and color fit so well with greenery around it. While walking around through the tall grass to get a good photo (the one above). I stumbled onto my first Geocache. "What is this?"  It was an old ammo box just like I had read about.  Like a little kid at Christmas, I opened it up to see what was inside.  Having just read about geocaching in  fun book about maps, I was curious about the whole phenomenon.

 Apparently someone hides a, hopefully, watertight container, often a tupperware type, somewhere which contains a small notebook or log and sometimes trinkets or various things.  They then record and publish its GPS location, then others look for it.  Seems a bit strange but I already can see the allure.  So I recorded my "handle" which I made up on the spot, in the log, then downloaded the app and created my account to then record the "find".  Actually fun and Sraddha was laughing the whole time.

Sraddha twisted her knee yesterday on the hike in Blue Basin so we didn't hike the falls trail this afternoon.